Top Ten Images of 2010

The polls are closed, the votes are in, and here are the winners—as chosen by you, the readers.

The response went far beyond my expectations. Over 100 people chimed in with their picks, and my wife Claudia had to create a spreadsheet to keep track of them all! My heartfelt thanks to all of you who voiced your opinions. I really appreciate your taking the time to help me make these difficult choices. (Click here to see all 46 original nominees.)

Although I reserved the right to override theses votes, in the end I decided that the collective wisdom was greater than mine, especially with so many people chiming in. Here's a list of the ten images which received the most picks, and the number of votes they each received:

Image #3, Winter sunrise from Tunnel View, 69 votes

Image #11, Redbud reflection II, 64 votes

Image #13, Horsetail Fall by moonlight, 64 votes

Image #9, Painted Hills in the Temblor Range (vertical), 45 votes

Image #18, Middle Gaylor Lake at sunset, 45 votes

Image #32, First light on Three Brothers (second version), 45 votes

Image #5, Gray pines after a snowstorm, 44 votes

Image #19, Sunrise, North Peak and Greenstone Lake, 42 votes

Image #40, Swirling mist, El Capitan Meadow, 39 votes

Image #42, Ice sculptures and Wildcat Fall, 39 votes

As you can see, there was actually a tie for second place, and the three-way tie for fourth. And some of the counts are skewed because I included two similar, slightly different images. The most prominent example of this is numbers 31 and 32, the two versions of First Light on Three Brothers. These actually got 22 and 23 votes respectively, but since they are so similar I felt that they split the vote, and one version deserved to be in the top ten, so I combined the votes and included the one that got, by a hair, more picks.

The whole process of trying to pick out my ten best photographs of the year was very interesting and rewarding; I'll write more about that soon. And I'm sorry if your favorites didn't make the final cut— some of my favorites didn't make it either! But overall I'm really pleased with this selection. It's a good mix of grand landscapes and more intimate, intricate compositions. Nice work everyone! I'll be submitting this post shortly to Jim Goldstein's blog project.

Again, thank you so much for your participation. This has been really fun for me, and I hope you've enjoyed it too. Here are the top ten images:

It’s easy to take autofocus for granted. I know, I do. This technology is amazing—your camera has to figure out what should be sharp in a scene, focus the lens and take the picture, all in a fraction of a second.

The Hue/Saturation adjustment is found in most image-editing applications, and offers one of the best ways to change colors both globally and selectively. This easy-to-use tool creates remarkably different looks to your color images.